Subsystem: Starship Weaponry
Subsystems: Starship Weaponery Even thoguh Starfleet is not a military orginization, there comes time when it has to fight back against aggressors, tyrants, and other threats to the security of the Federation and other peoples. When pushed comes to shove, or enviormental dangers threaten, Starfleet Vessles are equipped with powerful tactical systems to protect themselves and strike back at the enemy. Weaponery comes in four parts. The type of weapon itself; the weapon's targeting system; the weapon's arc of fire; an the fireing modes the weapon can use. All beam weapons have a range of 10/30,000/100,000/300,000. For every 100 kilometers beyond long range increases the diffculty to hit the target by +10 to a roll. A ship may negate this penalty , thus effectively extending the range by attempting to aquire a target lock. Phasers Power Cost: 2 Power per emitter The primary weapons on most Starfleet ships are phasers. Phasers (short for PHASed Energy Rectification) use a rapid nadion effect (RNE) to relase and transfer energy generated within supercoducting crystal known as fushigi-no-umi. Ships can use these beams of energy as tools (say, to remove obstacles, excavate large holes, or reshape planetary terrain) or as weapons. Ship-mounted phasers are orginized into tyeps, rated from I (one) to X (ten). Generally Type X is the most powerful type of Phaser which Starfleet can mount on a ship. Advances in technology have allowed for XI and XII phasers on larger ships. Phasers consist of multiple emitters organized into series called arrays. An emitter has three main parts: An EPS submaster flow r egulator (which controls plasma power levels); a plasma distribuation manifold (PDM), which cannels the power to the prefireing chambers; and the actual phaser emitter crystal. A large array, such as the ones found on the dorsal or ventral surfaces of many ships' saucers, may have as many as 200 emitters (the minimum number is 40). The tyep of emitter dictates how powerful a beam an array can emitl; the size of the array indicates how many beams that array can emit at one time (singly or as mltifire burst). The EPS Subsystem which provides power to a phaser array (sometimes called "banks") also include an auto-phaser interlock which links with the TA/T/TS computer to assure accurate fireing. It precisely times the fireing of the array for maximum chance of successful shot. The table shows detailed infomation about phasers. How many shots per round a given array can fire based on its size (eather as signle shot or as part of multifire burst; the power cost must be paid seperately for each shot). A phaser shot costs 2 power type of emitter; thus, a shot with a Type VIII emitter costs 16 power. The Auto-phaser interlock does not cost power to use. Every phaser array comes equipped with a phaser array power cell which includes enough power for two shots from the array (at normal full strength). Crewmembers can drain this power also known as the "phaser reserves" or "defense reserves," for additonal power. 'ACB Jacketting' Power Cost: +5 to cost of phaser array Phaser beams are ordinarily useless at warp speeds; they dissipte twoo quickly in the presence of moving warp fields to be effective weapons. To provide a potential tactical advantage in warp speed combat situtaions, Starfleet had technology invented which jackets a phaser beam inside a annular confinmenet beam (ACB), similar to the one involved in the materialiization / demateralization process which is part of ttransporter use. The benfit to this is a ship can fire an ACB-Jacketed phaser beam at any target while the firing ship travels at warp speed, regardless of relative speed or angle of fire. Fireing Modes for Beam Weapons Power Cost: None Beam weapons have fireing modes which descirbe differnt ways of using them. The various modes Standard, pulse, continous, and wide beam are defined in the following seciton. *''Standard Mode is the one typically used. It does the weapon's basic damgae. *''Pulse Mode ''involves increasing the damage the weapon does by fireing a series of rapid pulse of energy. You can simulate this by increasing the weapon's damage with extra power, or as a form of single-wepaon multifire. Pulse phasers cannons cannot use this rule; they are already optimized for this type of fire only (which is why they do much more damgae then normal phasers of the same calibar). *''Continuous Fire ''mode involves mantaining a beam for longer thant normal, making it easier to hit the traget. This costs an extra 3 power. *''Wide Beam Mode ''allwos a beam to affect a much broader area. Instead of narrow beam, the beam widen. Though this reduces the strength and consontration of the beam. 'Frequencey Modulation' Like shields, beam weapons have frequency modulations. If a beam weapon's frequency can be modulated to match that ofa shield it's fired at, it will bypass shields to strike the target with no loss of energy. Conversely, shields can be modulated to provide greater defense agienst beams. When confronting enemies who adapt quickly to beam weapon frequencies, such as Borg, ships somtiems adopting a frequency-shifting fireing pattern which alters the beam's frequency with every shot, making it harder to track and analyze the frequency. 'Broad-Spectrum Phaser Fire' A ship can fire its phasers with a borader than normal energy specturm. This doesn ot affect the damage, but does interfere with the target's sensors. A successful hit places a +10 pentaily on enemy sensor rolls. Damage in this matter stacks and can reach a maxium of +40. Configureing the phasers for a borad-spectrum fire requires a successful Starship Weaponery Technology test. Failure results the phaser array is knocked offline and must be repaird. 'Carrier Phasers' A ship can configure a phaser beam to carry phyiscal agents, such as chemical weapons, biogenic weapons, or borg nanoprobes. This requires a minimum of six rounds to prepare With a successful Weapons Technology Test. If a phaser acting as a carrier impacts a planet, it spread the carried agent into the planet's atompshere. If it hits a ship and penetrates it's hull, it realses the agent into the ship. The better the attack result the more of the agent makes it through to spread. The effects depend on the agent carried. 'Isolated Emiters' A ship can improve the effectiveness of one of its phaser arrays by isolating it, isolating certain of its emitters, the shunting all of the phaser pwoer to tohse emitters. This increases the weapon's damage as high as it can go. This is often called (Phaser Emiter Overload). This takes a Successful Starship Weaponery Operations skill test. Failure results in a burn out of the isolated array until it can be repaired and brought back online. 'Main Deflector Phaser' If the emitters in a phaser array have been damgaed, but the phaser generators (the EPS subsystem powering it) remains substantially intact, the ship can adapt the main deflector to act as a crude phaser emitter. This requries 1 round and test of the Starship Weaponery Technology or Starship Deflector Shield test. If the test succeeds, the main defelctor can protecjt a single phaser shot. This oen shot overloads elements of the main deflector, preventing the crew frm using this trick again until it's repaired. A failure on the skill test has no adverse effect. 'Phaser-Jacketed Phaser Beams' To strength a phaser beam, thus making it do more damgae and extending its range, a ship can jacket it inside a second phaser beam. This requires a Starship Weaponery Technology Test, and a Starship Weaponery Operaitons test. I f successful the phaser beam does 50% more damage, and 25% more range. 'Pulse Compression Wave' A ship can run a pulse comparission weave through a phaser array, thus increasing the strength of the beam it proejcts. This requires a successful Starsihp Weapon Technology Test. Success wil increase the damgae by 20%. Failure will toss the array offline until it can be repaired and brought back online. 'Phasers as a Tool' A ship can use its phasers in variosu capacities as tools. These include: *Drilling: It takes approximailty two hours to refit a ship's phasers to drill into a planet's crust through an atmoshpere (one hour if the planet has no atmopshere). *Light: On wide Beam settign and there lowest level of damge, phasers can fuction as a source of light to illuminate dark areas. *Plantery Riot Control: Lowest grade / setting phaser beams can be set to could stun a large area with a blast. The phasers don't so much do the stunning but the sonic boom of light striking ground can daze or stun people. Others will faint from lack of oxagen as the blast will quickly consume air in the focused air for a few moments. Phaser Cannons Power Cost: +5 Power to cost of phaser array They combine large. nearly flawless emitter crystals with rapid-dscharge EPS capacitiance bansk and high-speed beam foucscapacitance bank and high-speed beam forcus sing coils. This technology allows the coils to store the phaser charge for a few nanoseconds, the realse is a layered pulse. Shield and materalis have a hard tiem disperssing the layered energy pulse than standard phasers beam, resulting in more damage to a target. Pulse phasers cannons are usually built into ships in linked pairs. They have the same range as standard phasers but are slighlty more accurate and do more damage. On the other hand, they have a small fireing arc (usually just stright forward) and cannot fire in continuous mode, or in wide-beam mode without extensive modifications (which limits there usefuleness as tools - they're realy meant only for combat). They can perform single-weapon multifire, or multiple-weapon fire with other phasers of any time. Missile Weapons Power Cost: 20 In addtion to beam weapons, most ships carry at least one missle type weapon / torpedo launcher. Though many differnt types of torpedoes, such as photon, plasma, quantum, and gravimetric, are used, the launchers them selves are basically the same from one ship to another. They typically consisit of tubes about 30 meters long made of tritanium, sarium farnide, and similar materials. Sequential field induction coils and launch assisted gas generators provide the pwoer to fire the torpedo. One important diffrence between diffrent types of torpdeos launchers is the spread they can fire, meaning the number of torpedoes a launcher can fire in one round (either one at a time, or via one or more multifire burst). Most launchers are limted to oen to five torpedoes in a spread; advance models can fire spreads up to 10 or more torpedos. The standard Starfleet torpdeo launcher the type used to launch type II photon torpedos or Mark 1 quantum torpedoes are what is typically mounted on a starship. For High-yield torpedoes, such as the Type VI photon torpedo, a special type of launcher is erquired (the normal launcher cnanot fire them at high-yield level). 'Torpedo Storage' Ships have to carry a sufficient laod of torpdeos casing the parts so that they have enough ammunation to meet any chllanges they might face. Probes share this space as well. 'Microtorpedo Launchers' Power Cost: 1 Power A microtorpedo launcher is a device for fireing microtopredoes, small missles loade with chemical explosives. They have ranges of 1/100/500/2000. 'Tricobolt Devices Power Cost: 5 (Must use High Yield Luncher) These powerful photon torpedo-like weapons are carried by a few Starfleet Vessles. Not gnerally considered weapon of war, the tricobolt device is used to destory derelcit space stations, crack open small astriods so miners can get at there interiors, and so forth. A tricobolt device can only be launched fro ma high-yeild torpedo launcher. It has a range of 5/350,000/ 1,500,000/4,050,000 and uses the launchers targeting syystem to detemrin its accuracy. Tricobolt devicves must be prepared before fireing. Preparing one takes one minute and a Starship Weaponery Operations test. F ailure indicates the officer must spend another minute trying agian. Tricobalt devices are not stored while prepared due to the violitie nature. There arming mechansium doens't come online until the first range incrament. Making them useless until 5000 kilometers. Photon Torpedos Starfleet's Primary missle weapon as is the photon torpedo (though the quantum torpdeo has become standard.) However photon torpdeos because because of there size deman have become popular for smaller vessles. Made of casing 1.2 x 0.76 x 0.45 meters in diamater and weighing 176.6 - 247.5 kilograms, it contains masses of matter and antimatter in thou sands of minute packages which meet and explosively annihilate at the moment of impact. For the standard version, the type II, the tield is approximaetely 18.5 isotons. The almost equally as a common type IX has a yield of about 25 istons. Some advanced models, sch as the type VI, have yields of to 200 isotons. The accompanying table lists the types of torpedos availbile. '''High-Yield Torpdeos Generally, beacuse all photon and quantum torpdeos use the same casing, one system or payload can easily be swapped out for antoher if nessarcy. Some type of high-yield torpdeos suffer from fireing restrictions even though they use the same casing as basic torpedos. They may be fired at an effect equal to a type II photon or mark 1 quantum torpdeos, as apporpiated, from a basic torpdeos launcher. To fire thime at there full effect, a ship must meet the requirements. #It must fire them from a High-yield Torpedo Lunacher #IT must have a crewmember spend one hour and making a Starship Weapon Technology test to convert the torpedo to high-yield status. 'Range' The standard ranges for most torpedoes are 15/300,000/1,000,000/3,500,0000. However recent advancements by Starfleet and prehaps other pwoers) have inncreased the fuel tanks size of the individual torpedo, extending the range of the missle to 15 / 350,000 / 1,500,000 / 4,050,000. For every 1,000 Kilometer beyodn long range, increases the diffiuclty to hit a target by +10 pentily on a Starship Ranged Attack Roll. Of course, even in a society which has improved torpdeos, not al lships may come equipped with them, for various reasons. Torpdeos are pgorammed to self-destruct as harmlessly as possible if they reach their maxiumum range without impacting a target. If necessery, a torpedo can extend its range by having its engines draw on the reactants which create the explosive effect for additional fuel. For every tye the torpedoe's maxium range is extended by 50,000 kilometers. If a torpdeo is used on a target within five kilometers of a ship fireing it, the blast from the explosion when the torpedo hits its target will do one-quarter of the damage to the fireing ship. Becuase they're easy to see coming over such distances, and thus easier to avoid, grants a helsment a -10 bonus to there Starship Helm Operations tests. Torpedoes leave ion trails behind them as they travel through space. 'Velocity' While torpdeos do not have independent warp speed capbilitiy, if fired by a ship moving at warp speeds they use a warp sustainer engine to maintain the velocity imparted by the ship at the time of launch. If launched at impuls speeds bor by stationary target such as a starbase, they travel at ,95c. Thus, it is somtimes possible for ships to outrun them. The range, damage, accuracy, and other characteristcs of a torpedo remain the same regardless of the velocity the ship fired it at. If a torpedo is fired at warp velocity at a target also traveling at warp speeds, and the target the ndrops to impulse speeds, the torpedo does not drop to impulse. It contineus towards its target at its current warp speed and attempts to impact as normal. As they travel, torpedoes leave ion trails behind them. A ship can trace torpedo's ion trail just as it traces from one ship's impulse engines. 'Self-Guidance System' A torpedo has a self-guidance system. Once informed of its target by the Tactical Officer, it will continue to follow that target, regardless of how the target turns or moves, unti it hits the target, misses it, or reaches the extent of its range. It's possible to fire a torpedo in one direction (for example, aft) and have it arc completely around to the opposite direction (in this case , forward) to strike a target, provided the entire journy does not exceed its maxium range. Similarly, torpdoes fire in a spread from a single launcher at the same time do not have to impact the same target; following there targeting data, each can pursue a seperate target if so desired. 'Damage and Realted Configurations' Torpedoes can be reconfigured to do less damgae than their full damage This can be done witout making a test, bud does require an action. A torpedo's damage cannot be increased with extra power. With somewhat more diffiuclty, most typeso f torpedoe can be configured for other effects such as. #''Warp Flare:'' The torpedo emits a flare of light bright enough to illuminate an area of 3 MUs in radius. This configuration requires a rountine Starship Weaponery Technology Test. #''Radaition Burst: If fitted with a radiogenic warhead, a torpdeo can emit a burst of various types of radation (for example, delta radation). However, the radiogenic warhead takes up so much room that the torpedo must be targeted manually, nad only has maxium range of 300 meters (thus, all attacks with such warheads are at point blank range.) Fitting warheads properly requires a successful test of Starship Weapon Technology skill. #''Proximaity Blast: ''The torpdeo can be configured to explode after a set amount of range. Allowing them to be used like depth charges. There damage force doens't come from harsh impact but from being close to a photon blast. 'Fireing 'P'atterns' Starfleet has de veloped a number of torpedo fireing patterns which enhance a ship's ability to hit a target or targets with one or more torpedoes. The accompaning table describes several of the Starfleet Patterns. A successful Starship Weaponery Operations test to use the pattern properly (the tactical oficer must fire at just the right time in the righ way). Success means the result of the rolls will benfit by that much Quantum Torpedoes The quantum warhead relies on rapid energy extraction from zero-point vacuum. This is established from an 11-dimensional space-time membrane, twisted into a Genus-1 topology string, housed inside the ultraclean vacuum of a 1.38 meter-long teardrop shaped zero-point field reaction chamber. The detonation of a photon torpedo warhead, enriched with fluoronetic vapor, inside the torpedo powers a continuum distortion emitter. It expands the membrane and pinches it out of the background vacuum. The membrane forms into subatomic particles accompanied by a high-explosive energy release.Starfleet began to include quantum torpedoes within its arsenal as early as 2371. In the same year, the mirror universe Terran Rebellion obtained quantum torpedo technology by stealing it from the Federation, along with the plans to build a Defiant-class starship Pulse Wave Torpedoes This form of torpedo is similar to a type II photon torpedo, but emits an energetic pulse wave when it explodes. The blast does damage, and on a 33% chance the subspace interfrance caused by the blast imposes a +20 penality to shipboard sysetm test involveing subspace based technology (inculding sensors, transporters, shields, an communcations) the target makes for the next seven rounds. Stratospheric Torpedoes Ordinary photon torpedoes and other missles cannot be used for planetary bombardment, because they break apart without properly exploding as they attempt to hit the ground an atmopshere. (Once a ship is inside an atmosphere it can use tordpoes at targets within short range withotu suffering this problem.) A stratopspherica torpedo, on the other hand, is designed to explode inside a planet's atmosphere. This allows chemical, biogenic, and similar weapons to be used agienst the planet or its population, or torpedoes to be fired at medium or long ranges within an atmoshpere. Stratoshperic torpedoes do not count as high yield torpedoes; they can be launched from regular launchers. Gravimetric Torpedoes Gravimetric torpedoes are advanced Starfleet missile weapons whoes explosions create intense gravimetric fields, tearing targets appart through the strain as much as the detonation. They do the same damage as type II photon torpedoes, but deflector shields provide only half protection when used agienst them. On the othe hand the ship's SIF applies to reduce the damage. Gravimetric torpedoes count as high-yield torpedoes, and thus require a special launcher. Microtorpedoes Microtorpedoes are 13.3 cm-long missles loaded with chemical explosives (chemical or biogenic warefare agent payloads are also possible.) They have very limited range, making them ineffective in starship combat but useufl for some form of atompsheric combat or agianst unshielded structures. Antimatter Container Expolsives A ship in desperate strain can try ejecting a container filled with antimatter,then detonating it with a photon torpedo.If hit the exploasion does additional damage in for ships withi n 2,000 meters. Mines Mines are, essence, stationary torpedoes. Left floating in space to guard some area or interfere with passage through a particular region, they explode only when a ship comes close enough to them to trip their proximity or contact triggers (they can also be detonated by remote control by the person who placed them.) They have no ability to move, other than small thrusters to help keep them in place. Versions include: *''Antimatter Mines: ''Antimatter mines are the mine version of the standard Type II photon (more powerful versions are avalible). They use magnetic triggering capabilites to detect they approach of an enemy ship and detonate. *''Cloaked Mines: ''A Klingon weapon, the cloaked mine hides itself while cloaking field equivalent to a calss 10 cloaking device. They remain in place, inactive but invisable, until armed with a coded subspace signal. They then explode. *''Gravitic Mines: A mine version of the gravimetric torpedo. *''Self-Replicating: ''Invented by Diagnostic and Repair Technician Rom of Deep Space 9 in 2373 as a last-ditch effort to prevent Dominion forces from coming through the Bajoran worm-hole, the self-relicating mine consists of a 1.76 x 1,76 x 1.85 meter duranium cargo container filled with off-the-shelf photon torpedo parts and replication technology. The replication technology contains enough raw mater to produce 1/65 of a mine; these mines use subspace emitters to draw on each others' replication capacity to produce entire mines. Thus, before it explodes, a self-replicating mine creates a mine to replace it, making it very dangerous for any ship to venture anwhere near a self-replicating minefield. *''Spatial and Subspace Charges: ''Similar to mines but less powerful, spatial and subspace charges are usually placed by a ship as it passes through an area to deter pursuit or flash another ship out of hiding. Spatial charges work like antimatter mines; Category:Subsystem